Boston University prides itself on its academics, geographic location and independent students. We have top-tier programs in almost all schools and colleges, we’re located in a major metropolitan area and we are incredibly professionally minded.
We don’t do tailgates, we don’t have a school-wide athletic following and we don’t have a football team. It’s not that we don’t have talented athletes. We certainly do, but as a school, we do not focus our entire social lives around athletic events.
A recent New York Times article outlined the extreme lengths college athletic programs are reaching to attract students to sporting events. Clemson University has an in-house deejay, Arizona upgraded its student section and BU has the Cane’s Challenge. Yet, as explained in the article, two thirds of “21- to 38-year-olds … go to sports events not often or never.”
In an age of Snapchat event stories and High-Definition Television, the value of live sporting events are diminished. These inevitably mute the exclusivity one used to gain by holding a ticket to an event. Now, we see that touchdown from 50 different angles from twice as many sports outlets. And then we see it again, on our friends’ Instagram posts, as they brag about attending the game.
Isaac Chipps perfectly summed the average BU student’s perspective on sporting events in a Daily Free Press column last year. Chipps outlined any number of things he would rather be doing than watching BU’s opening hockey game in incredible detail, including listening to “a mashup of Donald Trump saying China over and over again” and stuffing his “face with Sunset Cantina nachos.”
It’s not that Chipps is a horribly cynical student nor reflective of the entire BU community. BU purposefully chooses to not focus on athletic events as being a primary outlet for social activity.
As clarified above, BU does not have a football team. This may contribute to our lack of focus on athletics, considering the vast majority of American college stereotypes revolve around a football team in some capacity or another. Yet, many other schools have basketball teams that garner far more attention than any football program. Syracuse University is a prime example.
It’s also not that BU’s sports programs are subpar. Our hockey program is one of the most celebrated in the country, graduating greats like Mike Eruzione and Tony Amonte, as well as a host of current NHL players. Perhaps our lack of interest stems from the sport itself.
At such an international university, hockey is just another foreign aspect of the experience. Though a massive phenomenon in the Northeast, hockey is not a universal sport across the country and certainly not the world. Most students can claim they’ve at least seen bits and pieces of a football game, but the same cannot be said about hockey.
That being said, Agganis Arena is usually packed on any given hockey game night, though a small percentage of those in attendance are students. The students that do attend are a highly dedicated bunch, swinging along with the celebrated BU Pep Band. Even the most sage scholar in the student section can be found cursing Boston College, even if BC isn’t on the ice on that given night.
The fact of the matter is that BU does not attract the kind of students who queue for hours to get in to a stadium, dooming athletic programs even before they’ve begun. If sports games were being shoved down our throats, chances are we wouldn’t have chosen to enroll here. Hiring a BU deejay wouldn’t help attendance or encourage school spirit, just as the incentive of free Cane’s chicken has not done so.
We are more likely to host a viewing party than cheer on the soccer team. We are more likely to go for a run along the Esplanade than rage at a midday tailgate. We are not a homogenous student body and we like it that way. BU has far too diffused of a fan base because of the many hundreds of identities our students assume every day.
We are huge fans and passionate about many numbers of things, Boston being one, but athletics are not in our game plan.
